Divinely Crafty

Friday I started to write a big post about how the weather was going to be fabulous “Warmer than Spain” the headlines shouted. Warmer, perhaps.  Dryer, maybe not.  Spring in England is a cruel tease.  The post listed all the many splendoured things that we were going to do in the allotment over the long Bank Holiday weekend.  As it turns out, the only bit that got done was the part I did on Saturday afternoon before it started to rain for several days.

We stayed plenty busy despite our allotment plans being foiled.  Maybe even because the plans were foiled. Somewhere along the line I decided that I am going to make this kirtle for my youngest to wear at a dance performance next weekend. They need to dress up in the period of the dance, Tudor, for the villager fun day the first weekend in June. Last year they wore shorts and t-shirts but this year, with the retiring of the old teacher that organized the performance, they have apparently brought on a more ambitious organizer.  Which somehow translates into Katie needs to make a fancy dress costume.  I am sure that other parents are no where near as insane as me, but a switch gets flipped in my brain that compells me to make instead of buy.  No rational thought employed, just irrepressible urge to do it myself.

The sun is back out and we need to get outside and finish up the allotment planting. The rains will have made the soil, which is a very clay soil, much softer and easier to work. Heavier, but softer nonetheless. It will be June next week and things should be well planted by then.  Onward ho!

Tags: costume, garden, handmade, kirtle, make it, sewing, tudor

It’s been a rough couple weeks around here in the fibromyalgia department.  It never fails.  Just when I think that I have at last found something that is really helping me and I start having visions of a semi-normal life… ding dong – big ol’ flare calling.  Man. Way to slam a girl down to earth you big kill joy of an illness.  hrumph.

When I cam back from France I was riding a wave of high energy.  The weather was so much better – so much dryer. Even though it rained part of the time, the atmosphere was less damp.  What an incredible difference it makes to how I feel.  I even took a few short walks!  Walks people!  I don’t take walks except a stumble from room to room in my house these days.  But in France I walked – for more than a few feet at at time!  That alone had me feeling like I could take on the world.  So when I came back I knew that it would be hard, I knew that I would have a post-holiday come down.  But I felt so good that I made a point to keep riding the wave of optimism and energy that I caught down there.  And for the first week or so I was able to keep it up.  I worked in the back garden, I worked in our allotment doing things I wouldn’t have believed I did if I didn’t know I did.  We had a party at our house over the May Bank Holiday weekend and I trotted around the place with only my walking stick and the occasional wobble.  Everyone said how good I looked, how great it was to see me up and about.  I agreed – I felt great! I celebrated what felt like a new beginning to something fantastic and exciting.

And then I crashed.  Hard.

In the weeks since I crashed it has been a struggle once more between my will and my body.  My will is intense and strong, and it is not at all pleased that my body is once again calling the shots, and the directive is: stay put and do nothing.  Not pleased at all.  So I pushed with all my might and in my best little engine voice cheered myself on as I struggled to get out of bed and do something – anything- to prove that I was not losing this battle.  I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.  I got back out to the allotment and dug in the dirt.  I sowed seeds and planted starts in their new beds.  Inspiration and visions came to me while I worked.  It was incredible and I felt that finally I knew how to live with this illness, that I had found that something I was looking for that would push me —-through—- the pain and into life.

But then I crashed. Even harder.

I didn’t get up this time.  I tried.  I got as far as the kitchen where I realized that making my breakfast -at 11:30 – was all that I could handle.  Even that was overwhelming. I ate and needed to go back to bed for a rest. By 1:00 I was flat out fast asleep.  Woke up at 5:00 (yes, that is a 4 hour nap) only to eat and crawl back in bed where I fooled myself into feeling like I did something by putzing around the internet. And so it has been for the past week.  Me sleeping late, doing nothing, and sleeping some more.  My body aches and screams when I push it each time I climb the stairs.  My own personal Everest those stairs are.  But no one is cheering when I get to the top.  Just me, letting out an exhale of relief that it’s only flat ground until I reach my bed.

This is a downer of a post.  I know, and I apologize.  It’s posts like these which I avoided writing for so many months while I have been neglecting this blog.  I promise I won’t write too many of them.  I do believe that I have found that special thing that is needed to keep me going forward and living with this illness, living with this body and not fighting against it.  Part of that is being honest though. Honest about my joy, about my struggles and honest about my victories as well as my failures.  They are all important. They are all me.  They are all divine and they all keep me crafty – looking for a new way to do things, creating a life worth talking about.  Even if I am just talking to myself.

Tags: coping, creative living, fibromyalgia, flare, life, struggles

Last month we went for a couple weeks holiday in France.  The first week was in Paris, where we surprised my youngest daughter with a few days at Disneyland.  She had a blast of course, but for my husband and myself the real fun started when we were able to do some sight seeing around Paris.   We only had a couple days to hit the highlights, and a return trip is definitely in the works.  Of course it was a top priority for me to make it to the Fabric District.  Now that is what I call Disney!

Marche’ Saint Pierre – 6 floors packed with fabric.  Need I say more?

My daughter displaying my rapidly growing stack of payment tags for my purchases – as I am intently wheeling myself and amassing my booty.  Good thing I left room in my suitcase to bring it all home in!

He loves me, but fabric shopping is not his idea of fun.

I on the other hand was in heaven!  (Yep – that is my new avatar.)  Paris fabric shopping induced bliss!

I will be blogging over at Beneath Our Feet with more pictures of our travels in France, so be sure to stop by there and check for updates.  After we left Paris we went to the Rhone Alps region where we are hoping to launch our dream venture from.  More on what that dream is later…

Tags: bliss on a bolt, fabric, fabric district, heaven, Paris, shopping, the real disney

I am slowly but surely amassing red accessories and accent pieces for my kitchen.  The piece that I have coveted for a long time is a red rubbish bin. But the price!  Ack!  My budget is not in that range and even if it was I have a hard time swallowing paying over £100 for something to throw my trash in.  Ebay and me are not friends when it comes to winning auctions (despite my use of snipe sites) and all my attempts at a good deal were thwarted in the last seconds of the auctions.  It seemed that I might never get my red bin.  Then one day whilst browsing at the local iron monger’s (where they had a lovely red bin on display for a mere £100 – taunting me as I shopped.) I came across the spray paint ailse.  My initial urge to come back at night and pronounce rubbish bin robbery on the shop windows was quickly replaced by the idea that I could make better use of my being over 18 (and therefore allowed to purchase said paint) by transforming my ugly duckling bin into the bin of my dreams!

I was on a mission.  Of course I had a flare of my fibromyalgia for a few days after I bought the paint so it sat quietly on a shelf waiting for me to get to it.  When I felt better there were other more pressing needs in the potting shed and in our allotment. (Which I really should blog about – allotment politics and gossip are the best!  Gardening in it is fun too.)  At last the day arrived when my body and my schedule were in sync so I set about my task.  It happened to be the day before a big BBQ party at our house. As I worked I imagined myself proudly presenting my new red bin to my guests amid oooohs and aaaahs of my crafty frugality.

Documenting the bin au-naturale.  It served us well when our kitchen was black and silver industrial when it was first purchased. After we moved out of that flat the poor thing has been somewhat of a eyesore and been mistreated.  I scrubbed it up nicely and readied it for it’s makeover.

Next I set up a paint booth by stringing up a couple paint drop sheets all over the patio. The wind was blowing towards the big bush so I tied it up and around it to spare it from getting sprayed. An up-ended recycle bin served as a base to prop the bin on and lucky thing – it was red so the paint didn’t muck it up. (Can’t have my recycling bins looking shabby now can I?) Thanks to the swine flu craze all the masks at the paint store were sold out so I donned a high tech breathing filter courtesy of my farmer husband (which I did not document in photos, but if you do work with spray paint use some sort of a mask. That stuff is awful. Were it not for the greater good of my kitchen decor I would not have used such a vile medium.)

Several hours and 4 coats of spray paint later …. My beautiful red rubbish bin!!! (Fully deserving of all 3 exclamation points.)

Ain’t she a beauty? And for a mere fraction of the cost of the extortionately priced ones. The bin cost us £14 when we bought it 4 years ago and the spray paint was £7. I used 1 whole large can of paint. The gray metal showed through for the first 2 coats and the 4th,final coat gave it a nice even shine. I had no idea going into the project that it would take so much paint and originally contemplated buying a mini can. Thankfully I went for the big can or I would have had to buy 3+ of the small cans at a much higher end cost. (full disclosure: actually I used a whole large can and 5 squirts of another can but that was because some fluff flew onto the final layer of painting the lid. I had to buff it out with some steel wool and give it an extra coat. Were it not for the wayward fluff it would have been a one can project. )

Oh – and at the party I did indeed smile with pride as my guests commented on my lovely bin and were duly impressed with my ikea hack skills.